My Handsome Son's Birthday is Today

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SON!!!

I can hardly believe you are 9 yrs. old already. We love you dearly.

Love, Mom

He's Happy Now

I just finished my son H's quilt this evening. I wanted to get pictures of it to post here, but he took it straight to bed with him. I'll have to post pictures later.

So, all 3 of my kids have a quilt of their own now, made by their Mama. My son C said he wouldn't sell his for $1000.00 because it's too special. H, on the other hand, is always figuring how to make some moolah! He wants to sell it for $1000.00, and split the money for me. Then, he says, I can make him another one. The wheels of thought are always turning, aren't they?

Check back for pictures.

Liver Transplant Update

My mother-in-law didn't get that liver on Dec. 11th. I kind of left the story hanging, but she got to the hospital and did all her surgery prep. She was on the table, ready to be cut open, and the transplant team called a halt to the transplant. Something on the donor liver didn't look good. We were all very disappointed, but knowing that kind of thing happens, not too discouraged.

She ended up getting a liver for real this time, on Dec. 28th. She had a rough go of it for a couple days after the surgery, but she's home now and doing very well. She's feeling SO much better, it's amazing. We are very thankful for God's care over her. She's got a new lease on life. For those of you praying for her, thank you so much.


Here's a picture of her with our little girl, taken about 1 1/2 yrs. ago.

BIG News!

I had to share this. I just got a call from my mother-in-law. My father-in-law is driving her to the hospital right now for her liver transplant. She sounded chipper on the phone, even excited. I'm sure it must be nerve-wracking, though. If you would, could you please pray for her as she goes through this process? I appreciate it so much, and I know my husband and the rest of the family do also. Thank you.

It's Exciting

I am excited to call myself an honest-to-goodness tutor of children that are not necessarily my own. I officially started tutoring a couple weeks ago. My idea was to tutor children that are at the level of my boys, or below, since all that stuff is in my recent memory. That's not how it turned out for my first student, however. A homeschool mom approached me a couple weeks ago about working with her 11th grade daughter when she has essays, reports, etc. Wow! I am not the best writer. Sure, I did fine with it when I was in high school and college, but to teach somebody else how to do it? And this long since I did it myself? I didn't know how I felt about that. I guess I don't have much confidence in myself as an upper-level teacher, but figure I'll work up to it right alongside my own kids as we homeschool through the years. I did it once; I can do it again, right?

Well, I worked with her for an hour a couple weeks ago on a history paper, and I wasn't sure it helped her. Our mistake was to start with her paper already half written, and try to fix it up a bit. We weren't sure of the instructions for the paper from the on-line school. Since she forgot to bring the actual assignment along for me to see, we ended up winging it. The other problem was that she was writing about something I don't know anything about. We didn't have her history book to look stuff up in, so I wasn't sure what was going on. I can say that we did our best. One good thing, though, as an added bonus, my kids were perfect angels and let me work with K for a whole hour and a quarter without interruption. I was so proud of them!

Well, she called me to work with her again, and I went to her house this time. My kids were able to play with her 12 yr. old son while I was busy with K in the dining room. We were able to start from scratch on the project, review the lessons that they were "testing" her on, and write the paper. You know what? The grammar concepts I was supposed to help her with didn't look like anything I have ever seen before in my whole life! I needed the review in the beginning of our session probably more than she did. (Do you guys remember verbals, gerunds, infinitives, participles, and complex vs. compound sentences? I think the terminology has changed in the past 20 yrs!)

It took us 2 solid hours to complete the assignment, including the review. We both felt great about the paper, and she was even smiling when we got done because she felt like the lesson material finally made some sense to her. I was so excited. We called her mom in to see what we had accomplished, and her mother asked her to save it (again, since we had made several changes since the last save). Her computer has been having troubles, and it deleted instead of saving it! So all she had was about half the paper saved. She had to replicate the rest of it by herself before turning it in to the on-line teacher this morning. It was getting late, and I had to get the kids home for supper. It was getting dark when we left their house, and I knew it would take about 50 min. to drive home.

I have been sick about this whole thing, since we had that paper fixed up just right before it was partially lost. I just called K to see if she had any news about how well her teacher received her assignment. She was elated to say that she got a 95% on the paper. I am so proud of her. I can't help but wonder how she would have scored had the paper not been cut in half before she could turn it in.

If anybody knows any other students to send my way, let me know. I could get into this, and it sure helps while we're struggling with our business right now.

MIL Update

I am happy to say that my MIL is out of the hospital and home where she's much more comfortable. The internal bleeding must be finally contained; after a couple surgeries and several blood transfusions, she's feeling much better.

I was able to give her the quilt I made for her, and she loves it. It even matches their sitting room perfectly. (I'm really glad she approves of the colors I chose, as I'm not as good with colors and design as some of the other women in my family!) My in-laws spend a lot of time in this room, so she'll get ample use out of it. She loves that it's soft on her skin, and therefore doesn't aggravate the itching she gets, as often happens with liver patients.

More good news--she's first on the liver transplant list for our area. It could be any day now, when they call her to come in for the transplant operation. She's ready to get it over with, and we're hoping it's sooner than later.

Our Thanksgiving

I'm not getting on to moan about our Thanksgiving Day. I have plenty to be thankful for, and I am thankful for so many things.

Our thankfulness is overshadowed though with news of my husband's mother. She went in the hospital Wed. morning, and is still in tonight. She was not able to share Thanksgiving dinner with us and we missed her.

I just got off the phone with my father-in-law and he said she just got out of surgery. Hopefully, they were able to fix some leaking around a shunt near her liver. She's been bleeding internally and they haven't been able to figure out what the problem is. She is very ill this time. She is in desperate need of a liver transplant, but I fear she's too ill at this point to even get one.

I am frustrated with waiting. My FIL is a loner much of the time. He doesn't want to "put us out" to have us drive all the way in to the hospital with all 3 kids, only to find she's gone the whole time for procedures. We wouldn't mind going in, but he does seem to want to go through this in his own way. I feel so helpless just sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring. So, I leave it up to my husband to make the decisions about when to go in to see her or not. It's hard for me to just wait.

I did call her on the phone today (finally got her, since she was out of her room most of the day.) She could hardly talk to me, and most of the time she was not even thinking clearly. Plus, she was simply too weak to speak.

So, I wait and I pray. And I wish I had given her quilt to her long before now. I was saving it for Christmas. Then, a week ago, I decided to give it to her for her birthday/Thanksgiving, since we aren't exchanging Christmas gifts this year. And now, I wonder if she's too sick to know when I give it to her. I made a custom personalized quilt label for it 2 nights ago, but I can't show the pic here since it's got personal names on it. (If you want to see the label, email me and I'll send it to you. It was an iron-on, colored in with crayons and set with a hot iron. It turned out really nice.)

So, I'm off to pray some more. And hope we get to see her tomorrow at the hospital, feeling better than she has for the last several days.